Framola Extra Strong British Made Timber Rafter U Shape Bracket - One Piece Solid Steel Indoor Outdoors Rafter Brackets - Durable and Rustproof - Black (4" x 2")

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Many conventional roofing products, such as shingles, mandate a slope no lower than 2:12. More, they usually claim that 4:12 is the lowest you can go without any special underlayment. Our roof we will be constructing will be 4:12. Calculate the Length of Your Rafters Mark out where you are going to place your rafters. If you are doing 16” OC, then start ¾” in from the front edge of your top plate, where your first rafter is going to sit. From there, measure 16” down the top plate. Make another mark. Go until you get to the end.

Your last rafter won’t be exactly 16” away, so your last two will likely be closer than the others, which is fine. After you’ve marked where each rafter will go, it is time to install the top plate to rafter hurricane tie connectors. Be sure to place them so that the notch opening is flush with the top plate of the walls. They are installed so that they will be nailed to the interior sides of the top plates. Now you have a piece of 8” x 48” plywood. Use this piece to mark out the rest of the plywood. Now you need to cut your smaller piece into three triangles. Starting at one long edge, mark off points every 8”. Now do the same on the other long side. Connect the dots so you have three triangles, each 8” high and 16” long. Lastly, you’ll want to mark out the ridge beam in the same spots you’ve marked your top plate. I take the ridge beam and lay it on the top plate of one side of the wall, then mark the edge of the ridge beam just where I’ve marked the top plate. Make sure the top plate and ridge beam are aligned exactly.Attaching the rest of the rafters requires you to merely line up your rafters in the connectors you’ve already installed. If you measured correctly, this is the easy part. I would suggest you install the rafters in pairs. If you do just one side, all the way down, then the ridge board can come loose or be distorted from all the hammering in the same direction. Attach End Rafters If you look at the rafter span chart, you’ll notice that 2x4s can be used for rafters on spans up to 11 ½’. Anything beyond that you are looking at using 2x6s for most sheds. Tools and Materials Needed to Build Shed Rafters Tools Although many of the attachment methods for trusses are the same as rafters, attaching a roof truss to the top plate is a little more complicated due to the nature of trusses. When cutting the other end, be sure both cuts are parallel! If the length of the cut is 5’ 3 ½”, then you’ll be measuring only on one side from end to end. Using the miter saw, simply slide the wood through after you make your first cut. This ensures you keep the cuts parallel.

Requiring only a single screw per rafter, this presents one of the fastest ways to join your top plate and rafter. A TimberLOK screw doesn’t even need a pilot hole. How to Attach Roof Trusses to Top PlateGet some scrap 2×4 pieces. Cut four of them into lengths of a couple of feet or so. Screw each piece so that there is one above and below each rafter. Do it carefully so that rafters are not out of place. You can now remove your rafters and insert another pair – you’ve created a jig to cut your birdsmouth joints. Hurricane ties are a great option for securing your truss to your top plate. Installation is the same for trusses as for rafters (see above). Instead of attaching the tie to the rafter, you will be attaching it to the bottom chord of the truss. Hurricane ties offer a strong connection that will provide you with the strongest resistance against uplift. Once your rafter is in place, slide the plate into place and attach with Simpson Strong-Tie structural screws or galvanized 8d nails. With rafters in your jig, use a pencil to outline the cut in either rafter. Since both rafters are hanging off the edges of your shed, you’ll just outline the corners of the shed onto the 2x4s. You’ll be outlining underneath each rafter, but you’ll use the edge of the shed floor as a guide, so you don’t have to see what you are doing because the edges of the floor are your guide. I hope you were able to get some good information from this article in terms of how to build rafters for a shed and how to install them. Remember, there are many different ways to do these projects, and I’ve attempted to give you a way to do it cheaply, yet safely, while staying within budget.